Gilded Dreams

ExhibitionPast

Jan 31

noé olivas
Gilded Dreams

Crenshaw Dairy Mart Gallery
8629 Crenshaw Blvd, Inglewood, CA 90305
february 28 - MARCH 31, 2024
OPENING RECEPTION: MARcH 2, 2-6pm

SHOW CATALOG (PDF)
PRESS RELEASE (PDF)

Presented by Crenshaw Dairy Mart (CDM) Gallery with support from Charlie James Gallery, Gilded Dreams is a solo presentation of a new body of work by interdisciplinary artist noé olivas. The exhibition features new works in sculpture, painting, and performance as a continuation of the artist’s investigation into what he calls the poetics of labor.

For over a decade, olivas has explored the various manifestations of labor in the United States from his lived experience as a first-generation Mexican American from a working-class family. Gilded Dreams expands on the poetics of labor by interrogating labor’s relationship with leisure, the American West, and its potential for liberation through CDM’s three guiding themes: ancestry, abolition, and healing. olivas is a co-founder of CDM, an artist collective and gallery dedicated to communal arts and education, and its guiding themes have long been central to his own practice as he explores his family’s relationship to the invisibility of immigrant labor and the grueling toughness of its performance. Gilded Dreams is both a critique of US-Mexico relations and a meditation on the possibility of collective liberation. Utilizing an urban vernacular rasquachismo, olivas employs his family’s archive of tools, objects, and other collected materials to construct sculptures that meditate on the intended material use of these objects while also transforming them into spiritual icons capable of forging a path towards freedom.

The opening reception for Gilded Dreams will feature a performance program that honors important members of olivas’ artistic community. Happening durationally, the commissioned performances will reinterpret CDM’s core themes of ancestry, abolition, and healing, and present audiences with transformative moments of collective reflection.

● San Diego-based duo robyko presents AR:4[POUR.BLOOD.OF.SPIRIT], a performance that engages ancestry by inscribing the CDM family tree in “alchemicode,” their means of transforming words and materials into other elements through alchemy.
● CDM co-founder, artist, and abolitionist Patrisse Cullors performs Courageous Conversations, asking participants to practice abolition by building the courage to have difficult conversations.
● Performance artist and curator Marcus Kuiland- Nazario presents a site-specific installation and performance entitled BOTANICA/botanica: Resurrection, where he meditates on the quintessential botanica shop as a place for seeking and receiving healing by inviting people to have one-on-one experiences with the botanica’s featured item the Rose of Jericho.

noé olivas (b. 1987, San Diego, California—occupied Kumeyaay land) lives and works in South Central Los Angeles. He received his MFA from the University of Southern California in 2019, and his BFA from the University of San Diego in 2013. olivas' makes sculptures, prints, and performances that investigate the poetics of labor, specifically labor's relationship to leisure as well as its access to liberation. His work has been exhibited at the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps College, Claremont (2024); Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles (2023, 2019); Mandeville Gallery at the University of California, San Diego (2023); Candlewood Festival, Borrego Springs (2022); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2022); The Front Arte Y Cultura Gallery, San Ysidro (2021); Napa Hall Gallery at the California State University Channel Islands, Camarillo (2020); Open Mind Art Space, Los Angeles (2019); Residency Art Gallery, Inglewood (2019); La Jolla Historical Society, San Diego (2018 San Diego Art Institute, California (2017); The New Children’s Museum, San Diego (2017); and the San Diego Museum of Art. (2017). As part of the 2018 Mexicali Biennial, his work was also included in the traveling exhibition Calafia: Manifesting the Terrestrial Paradise at the Robert and Frances Fullerton Art Museum at the California State University, San Bernardino (2018), and Armory Center of the Arts, Pasadena, California (2019- 2020).

olivas has also performed in Open Mind Art Space, Los Angeles (2019); The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles (2020), Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles (2018), and the NADA and Prizm Art Fair, Miami (2018) with collaborator Patrisse Cullors; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2018) with rafa esparza. olivas is co-founder of the Crenshaw Dairy Mart, an art hub in South Central Los Angeles and Inglewood.

noé olivas: Gilded Dreams is curated in collaboration with Ana Briz. The abolitionist imaginary informs her curatorial practice and research interests. Currently she is the curatorial assistant of Beatriz da Costa: (un)disciplinary tactics (September 7, 2024 - January 5, 2025), curated by Daniela Lieja Quintanar for Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), part of the Getty Foundation’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide initiative. She is also the associate editor to the accompanying Beatriz da Costa book published by MIT Press. Briz is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California and holds an M.A. in Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere from the University of Southern California and a B.A. in Art History from Florida International University.

Exhibition Location:
Crenshaw Dairy Mart Gallery
8629 Crenshaw Blvd, Inglewood, CA 90305

Gallery Hours:
Thursday - Sunday, 1 PM - 5 PM
For appointments outside of gallery hours, please email info@crenshawdairymart.com

About the Crenshaw Dairy Mart Gallery
The Crenshaw Dairy Mart Gallery is an artist collective and art gallery dedicated to shifting the trauma-induced conditions of poverty and economic injustice, bridging cultural work and advocacy, and investigating ancestries through the lens of Inglewood and its community.

www.crenshawdairymart.com